


All Will Be Well

by saisei



Category: Original Work
Genre: Barbed Penis, Birthing Monsters, Body Horror, Breeding, Dick Is Too Big, Dragon & Princess noncon Knight come to free princess, Dragons, Eggpreg, Fast-growing rapist monster children of rape, Humiliation, Impregnation, M/M, Magic, Multiple Pregnancies, Non-Human Genitalia, Other, Xeno, graphic birth, painful anal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-05-29 17:34:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19404943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saisei/pseuds/saisei
Summary: Nineteen noble knights have been sent, one a year, to rescue the Queen's only beloved daughter from the clutches of a cruel dragon. None have ever returned; this year, the quest falls to Rain.





	All Will Be Well

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StormyDaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormyDaze/gifts).



"So," Shoal said, jabbing Rain with a sharp elbow. "Annual assignments will be announced today. You got your eye on anything?"

Rain shoved her away, and she cackled at him, eyes sparkling. "I go where our Queen wills me."

Shoal snorted and raked her gaze over him, head to toe. "You put on all that muscle for yet another year of escorting traders through the Eastern Pass. Sure. And that's a new tunic, your hair's oiled, you even knocked the mountain-mud from your boots. You look like a man heading anywhere but back east."

"You don't stink so badly of fish, yourself," Rain said, giving her his most charming grin, as if he was complimenting her sincerely. "Ready to leave the harbors?"

"The sea's my calling." 

"You just like killing monsters."

Shoal slapped him on the back, hard enough to sting but companionable. "I'm a knight, not a fisherwoman. Anything weird that crawls on shore deserves my spear through its head." She rapped her knuckles on the scaly leather of her chestplate. "Had this made up for me. Kraken followed the fleet in three, four months ago. Bigass fucker – took five knights to hack him down. I got a whole leg, took it straight off to the tanners to get some spells put on it." She grinned, sharp white teeth bright in her sun-burnished face. "Kept the hide from rotting. Turns a blade back, too."

"Nice," Rain said, in sincere appreciation. The worst things he'd faced in the mountains were other people; no monsters, unless the oversized snakes and chickens counted. He didn't think so, though they were good eating.

"Maybe you'll get something good this year," she said, and linked arms with him to walk the rest of the way to the grand arena.

*

She wasn't laughing when they left. Instead, she and two others who'd been knighted in their year dragged Rain into one of the courtyard alcoves to yell at him about his assignment.

"It's a death sentence," Acacia said with heavy finality. "Every year the Queen sends off her strongest and best knight to bring Princess Snow-on-the-Mountain home. Every year, no knight makes it back. What'd you do to piss the Knight-Commander off?"

"He's just big and dumb," Flint answered for Rain. "The Princess sent another portrait. She's been the dragon's prisoner for twenty years now, her mom wants to see her darling baby in person before she dies."

"She'll have to be rescued if she'd going to be the next queen," Rain pointed out. "Can't run a government from a dragon's basement."

"Big dumb optimist," Shoal said, and when she punched him in the shoulder she let her hand rest there, like she was trying to shove comfort into him.

*

Acacia took Rain to the temple, where his head was shaved and then his skin was rubbed with red clay head to toe. Over that, prayers were drawn in heavy black ink. Rain bore the itching from noon to dusk, seated on a bench in the hall and breathing in incense. He'd brought fruit as an offering, and passed time watching for flies, but not one flew in. They knew better than to steal from the gods, he supposed, and the thought made him feel more confident in his mission.

After the sun set, Acacia came back and helped him wash clean. The lines of the prayers remained, blue-black and otherworldly on the red-black of his skin. He tried not to touch them.

Acacia held his hand as they headed back to the barracks, and was silent, except for saying, "If you ran, none of us would blame you."

Rain had known once of them would say it; he squeezed Acacia's hand to let him know he didn't think less of him for his cowardly words. "I won't."

His hand was squeezed back. "I know."

In the morning, he took a fishing boat out to the center of the harbor, where a boat from the other side was hailed. He climbed from one to another – very careful to avoid dumping his supplies in the sea – and felt an odd loneliness as the familiar fell away behind him, and the unknown opened before.

At the opposite port, the hills beyond the curve of the village rose high and rocky, dotted with sheep and goats. The locals called them the gateway, and the animals were both their livelihood and a sacrificial offering. Beyond the hills were the dragons' lands.

Rain was full of the spirit of the quest, but his years with the traders stood him well. As he made his way west, following the wend of the Long River, he found a few humble settlements, like clay beads strung along a chain. The people who lived so far away from towns liked the isolation, and were wary of strangers. Their dialect was hard to understand, and they did not want to talk about dragons, or how to kill dragons. Rain had brought bolts of fabric instead of coin, though, and that earned him a place to rest.

They talked about the weather, and the fishing on the river, and in one or two places he was told about the Princess' portraits. Once a year, he was told, the Princess stole away from her captor and entrusted one of the riverboat captains with a precious wrapped parcel, to be delivered to the Queen. Down the river to the village, across the harbor, up to the heavy-walled castle and then... Then the Queen wept, Rain knew, and mourned, and chose that year's strongest knight as her rescuer.

The local people had seen knight after knight travel up this road, they assured him. He suspected they were hinting at how wasteful it was to feed a man who'd be dead shortly. He moved on quickly, to not cause trouble.

He saw his first dragons drifting in the clear midmorning sky, high enough that he could lie to himself that they were small. Birdlike.

Then he saw one savaging a goat on the far bank of the river. Easily twice his height, it was long and thin like a serpent, but with six pairs of legs. Dragons, he'd heard, never stopped growing. This one was probably no more than five years old.

He couldn't imagine how large the one holding the princess was.

*

When he finally reached the foot of the mountain where the beast had its lair, he thought he could sense dragon on the air, like hot metal and searing meat, and the lightning-strike smell of magic. He found a knee-high rocky overhang and shoved his supplies in, keeping out only his sword and shield, his bow, and the arrows Shoal had had made for him, tipped with kraken bone.

All his research suggested there wasn't an art to slaying a dragon. You just kept clear of the gnashing teeth, crippled the wings, and then hacked at it until it died of its wounds. Simple, he told himself, as he made his way up the stony mountainside, toward the yawning dark cavern. Easy.

The fight was over with not one drop of blood spilled.

The dragon had swooped down on him, snatched him up in great talons, and looped through the air in what Rain assumed was prelude to dropping him to his death and then devouring his corpse. He didn't want to die, but he hoped his death came from the fall and not from being eaten alive. His weapons were gone; all he had were his wits. If this were a fairytale he supposed the hero would make a wise bargain somehow, but he was fighting back nausea and trying to stay conscious.

Not, he thought with a pang, anyone's hero, nor would he ever be.

*

When he was limp and nearly accepting of his fate, the dragon plunged groundward at heart-stopping speed, then snapping its wings out to glide, swift and silent, inside the cavern. The entrance was large – ten times Rain's height easily – but the inside was even more vast, full of dizzying echoes as they flew through darkness with terrifying speed. One last sharp turn and suddenly they were out in the open again, in a place like a well, with a dry rocky floor as large as four rice fields, its steep walls rising high to show a near-perfect ring of sky overhead, beautiful and impossibly far away.

The dragon set him on the ground – he toppled over immediately from dizziness – and swung its head close to glare at him, first with one golden eye then the other. And then its black tongue flicked out and it said, " _Strip._ "

Talking dragons only existed in stories, like talking cats and cows. Even children didn't believe in them, yet here one was, demanding Rain prepare himself to be eaten by removing his unpalatable armor. He thought about quipping – as heroes in stories did – but he wasn't good with words at his best. He thought all he could manage to gasp out would be undignified pleas, begging for mercy from the monster. He didn't want to die like that. His shaking hands took many tries to get the buckles and laces undone, and all the while the dragon circled him, impatient, breathing out smoke and noxious vapor, a constant promise of being roasted alive.

When he was naked, the dragon said, " _Bear it._ " It flexed one foot at him, sharp claws showing their serrated edges. " _The magic here won't let you die._ "

Rain's heart thudded hard at the sudden surge of hope he felt on hearing that, but... the stone walls ringing them were still further than he could dash before being caught again. And the dragon was being kind, perhaps. His life might hang on that goodwill.

Or not. As the dragon circled one last time, he noticed that from low on its belly three pairs of cocks emerged from a crack in its carapace. They were wet with slime – or oil, perhaps – and the last two were stumps, roughly the size of Rain's fist, marred with white scars.

Rain felt a thrill of victory through the fear that threatened to gag him. The monster _could_ be harmed. He simply needed opportunity. An edged weapon.

The uppermost cock of each pair was barbed and ridged, like a club as thick as a man's arm, and as the dragon finished its prowl it reached out and caught him with a middle foot, plucking him up effortlessly and laying him facedown on the dusty ground. Stones dug into his chest, and he tried to protect his head with his arms, even as the weight of the first rough cock dragged down his spine to slip between the crack of his ass.

He could bear it, he told himself as the jagged chitinous tip jabbed, catching on the meat of his buttocks three times before finding the hole where it lodged. He _could_ and he would, and then he would slay the beast and return victorious.

But the pain was incomprehensible. He felt like he was being rent in two, his body's natural resistance no barrier at all to the intrusion. He was being torn apart, and his resolve to be dignified fled. He writhed and pleaded, tore his fingernails loose digging futilely at the ground, and still that massive cock dug its way deeper inside him.

When all of it was inside, he had no respite before it was ripped back out, then in again. Each thrust made his insides burn, whether from the slick liquid the cock was covered in or from magic he couldn't tell. He was in agony, and all he could do was lie and let it happen.

The dragon hissed, rearing up and then dropping its weight down over him, jerking the impaling cock out and driving the second of the pair in with a roar. It was thicker but smooth, and Rain was _grateful_ that it didn't hurt as badly, even though it lodged itself in his belly, where the pain was fierce and unrelenting, like a wound.

The dragon didn't fuck him with this cock, but instead it swelled suddenly, stretching him so wide he feared his hips would crack. The swelling had a rhythm to it, and he realized to his horror that something was being pushed into him, further in with each pulse, until it settled heavy like a stone deep within him. That act accomplished, the dragon pulled back, and Rain started to curl in on himself, wanting nothing more than to sleep and hopefully to die from his internal wounds.

He'd forgotten how many cocks the dragon had, but the dragon pressed him flat again with its foot, and then the second jagged cock ripped into him. He had no more strength for screaming, but he moaned like a wounded animal. He couldn't clench any of his muscles down there, whether from being stretched or torn he didn't know. He felt like he would never run again, and that thought made his eyes fill with hot tears that spilled into the sand. They turned the ground to gritty mud that stuck to his face.

He didn't want to die like this. Nor did he wish to survive.

Once again the hard cock was yanked out, the smooth one replaced it, and more things were forced inside him. His belly was so swollen now that he had to raise his ass up, getting his knees under him while his shoulders stayed pinned down.

His thoughts were drifting as the final pair of cocks fucked him. Neither was long enough now to reach deep, so it was simply his hole that took the brunt of the abuse and the dragon's frustration at its mutilation. When it was done, the dragon reared back, roaring in what sounded like rage, and then soared upward in a furious rush of wings.

Some part of Rain told him that now was his chance: he could make his escape and plot his revenge. But he was cold – so much he couldn't stop shaking – and numb, and didn't know how to move his body anymore. His knees were still under him, ass raised like he was begging for more, when he never wanted to be touched again, his breathing erratic at the mere thought. His body was harmed, something fundamentally wrong that he didn't understand. The numbness gave him a scant barrier against the horror, but he heard the dragon's words now as a threat: _The magic won't let you die._

He didn't sense anyone's approach, but suddenly there was a hand – human – slapping his hip, and he yelped, tried to scramble away, and succeeded only in dragging his face through the dirt.

"Stop." A woman's voice, impatient and imperious. "Are you completely senseless? Did they send their thickest knight this year? Stay still, let me get you sorted and then we'll head inside."

Like a farmer taking care of her livestock, the woman slid her fingers inside him, catching hold of the thing that sat heavy and wrong against the rim of his asshole. She pressed down on his lower back with her other hand, and the object popped out with ease; Rain hiccuped at the sting of the stretch. She set it down where he could see it: an egg, brown and mottled, easily as large as a child's head. He stared at it dumbly, his eyes pricking anew with tears. The woman didn't notice, or perhaps didn't care. She rested more of her weight on his pelvis, pinning him as she plunged her entire arm up inside him.

His first shocked thought was that it didn't hurt, and his relief disgusted him a moment later. She was pushing the other errant egg in to settle with the others, in the ghastly distend of his belly, where it sagged heavily toward the ground, in the space the dragon had ripped into him with its cocks.

She pulled her arm out and gave him a sharp strike across the ass. "Up, then. Don't keep me waiting. Don't you know who I am?"

He knew, deep down in his guts now roiling with pressure and pain. "Yes," he breathed out, getting his hands under him. "Your Highness." He rose to kneeling and then stood up like an old man, hand braced on his knee, swaying, spots dancing in his vision.

Princess Snow-on-the-Mountain snorted in disdain and turned her back on him as she headed towards the shadows at the foot of the great stone walls, the egg cradled in her arms as if it was precious. Perhaps it was. Maybe Rain was stuffed full of magical treasure, and once the memory of agony had faded he'd be more appreciative. But he could only manage a slow shuffle after the woman he'd intended to rescue, his arms supporting the jut of his stomach as if it'd tear free from the weight inside. It felt like that, at any rate.

The princess led him to a small shelter tucked under a sheer wall. Inside were a pile of bedding folded on a wood-slat frame, battered metal dishes on a shelf, some folded clothes, and an assortment of yarn balls, together with needles for knitting. There was an underground river whose waters fell into a pool a short walk away, where he was made to bathe and fill a kettle while she set the egg carefully in a straw-filled box. The firepit alongside the pool was protected by a ring of stones, and beyond it was a hill of bones, human and animal, cracked open and stripped of flesh. A wooden staircase was built along the wall just past the pool, rising to a smaller, human-sized entrance next to the tunnel Rain had emerged from; the rooms above, the princess warned him, belonged to her and the dragon. He was not to venture there lightly.

"The dragon needs an heir," the princess told him, once the water had boiled and she'd tossed in a handful of powdered herbs. Rain had been too unsteady on his feet to carry the kettle back, and the princess – to his shame – carried it for him. "Dragons mate with each other quite rarely, and their bodies can absorb the eggs if unwanted. Breeding with humans is more efficient. _I_ needed time away from court and politics – the tedium of my mother the Queen trying to marry me off or make me perform charitable acts of stultifying boredom. I was caught when I came here, as you were, but I was armed with knowledge of magic, and a wit you seem to lack. The dragon and I reached an agreement. He keeps me away from all that nonsense, and I supply one knight a year, who I keep alive with my arts."

Inside the shelter, she gestured sharply at him to put the bedding out, dress, and sit, while she poured him tea. No tunic would fit his bulging stomach, so he wrapped the fabric around his hips instead, like a peasant.

"Drink," she said. "And keep drinking. You shan't hunger in this place and in your condition, but thirst will kill you before you notice it."

He took the cup thrust upon him and sipped. The taste was bitter and salty, with a pungent scent that reminded him of the stink of dragon breath. A fine sand-like grit had settled at the bottom of the cup, and he swirled the dregs and drank that as well, fearing her wrath. He'd hoped for some kind of healing, relief from pain or even drugged numbness, but instead all he had was the unpleasant aftertaste and the disconcerting realization that his insides had been so compressed by the eggs inside that he couldn't hold more than a few mouthfuls of liquid in his stomach.

"Your Highness," he said, and then paused, trying to _think_ , but the pain that had lodged in him made clarity of thought impossible. "What of the others? The other knights?"

"Worry about yourself," she said, and brushed her hands off briskly on the apron she wore to protect a faded dress that might, once, have been splendid. "Bring water to my quarters in the morning for my ablutions."

"Yes, Your Highness," he said, exhaustion making him meek.

She made a scoffing noise, as if she couldn't believe him to be such an idiot, and turned on her heel, striding away with poised ease that reminded Rain of his own hubris, the confidence with which he'd come to slay the monster and save the princess.

He curled up on the cotton pad atop the straw mattress and shut his eyes. He cried, on and off, throughout the night, but dutifully took his tea each time. He wouldn't want to disappoint the princess by dying in his sleep.

*

Once he'd decided to live, the days and weeks bled into months. The princess, he knew, was more than capable of living alone; she apparently did so for several months each year, after the death of the latest knight from the strain of bearing dragonspawn. But now that she had a servant, she happily gave Rain chores to keep him busy from sunrise to sundown and returned to her preferred pursuits – art and music, and the study of philosophy and history. She worked on her latest portrait and keep up with her correspondence, penning long letters to scholars and magical researchers across the land; the dragon was fond of her, or ensnared by her wiles, and made these deliveries somehow. In the evenings, when the dragon returned to its cavern lair, she dressed in her finest gown and draped a crown of white and pink jewels on gold chains over her shorn head, while engaging the dragon in lively debate.

Rain didn't follow along with their discussions. He had no doubt their arguments were erudite, but they tended to rage against each other, and though it never came to violence, the air grew thick with threat and magic. Rain's heart hammered helplessly against his ribs, and he had to hide how hard he shook. By that time of day he was always barely able to think, anyway.

He had adjusted, much as he hated to realize it, to what had been done to him. He suffered stomach cramps throughout the day, enough to make him double over and have to pant through the pain. The once-firm tautness of his abdomen, honed by daily exercise, had been replaced by skin stretched as tight as a drumtop, and the wrap he wore for modesty did nothing to carry the weight. He needed his arms for that, which made it difficult to do all the laundry, cleaning, sewing, and cooking, a constant choice between pain and efficiency.

The upper cavern was vast, and only the part just inside the smaller entrance had a wooden board floor, which was where the princess had her bed and study, the stone hidden by woven wallscreens which were in turn covered in pictures and mirrors. A smaller cave next door had had its roof crushed in, and there the princess grew a garden as wild as a jungle. A subterranean stream had been diverted to run through it, and then ran down the well-side to fill the pool below, from whence the water returned to its underground travels.

Like the dragon, Rain was forbidden from entering the garden, despite how lush it looked in the sunlight, told he was so clumsy he'd ruin it all. He probably would. He found it hard to concentrate, to remember what he was doing from one moment to the next, when there were things his mind kept thrusting to the forefront of his thoughts at all the worst times. He didn't want to remember the weight of the dragon over him when he was mending the princess' petticoats, or the way he'd begged as he'd been fucked. The feel of blood slick between his thighs. The princess removing the egg, which he'd seen her use to make some kind of magic potion.

She was exceptionally clever, and sometimes Rain wished he could make a bargain, offer her his lifetime devotion and service in return for protection. But she'd had nineteen knights before him, he knew, and not one of them was still alive.

He didn't want to die, which made things hard. Not dying meant staying alive which meant always being afraid. Of the dragon. Of the princess.

*

After enough weeks passed that he'd been – impatiently – taught how to sew fit for a princess and had mended all her linens with a skill that earned him a promotion to dressmaker as well, he woke before dawn one morning with his stomach writhing, like a mass of worms under his skin. When he reached down with one shaking hand he found that he could feel the movements from outside; not his imagination, then. He stood, and felt the weight of that mass settle hard and heavy against his pelvis. Thick hot liquid slid out of his ass, smearing between his thighs as he limped outside in a panic, naked and panting. He made it as far as the foot of the stairs leading up to the princess' rooms before he recalled himself. She gave him guidance, but she was not his friend; someday, she'd be Queen. He had no right to wake her up for nothing that posed an immediate threat to her.

He headed for the pool instead. The water felt colder than usual, so perhaps he was running a fever. The flow from between his legs didn't abate, rust-colored and surprisingly scentless. He wiped it away periodically, with his washrag, but mostly he paced in circles, his brain skittering from one horrific possibility to the next. Of course eggs didn't stay inside forever. Naturally they must come out. But he'd seen women give birth, and he didn't want to endure that agony. He just wanted all of it to go away.

The dragon roused at dawn and flew down from its high lair to prowl around him like a predator. It told him to leave the water, and then informed him that he stank. Rain apologized – what else could he say?

"The spawn come," the dragon said. It was herding him, Rain realized, to the center of the great well. He let himself be led, because unlike the princess he had no power over the dragon, and could only hope for it to take mercy on him, or ignore him. He dreaded the moments its full attention was on him.

"It hurts," he said, though; not that he expected sympathy, but as an excuse for how slowly he was walking. His hips burned with pain, and even with both arms around his writhing belly he felt unbalanced.

The dragon snorted, hot steam rising, the closest Rain'd seen it get to amusement. "If you survive, you'll be stronger." His head swung around so he could stare at Rain with one great gold eye. "Stay your feet. Else they might try clawing their way out the wrong end."

As if Rain wanted anything clawing out of any part of him. "What happened to the eggs?"

The dragon went back to prowling around him, moving him to a warm patch of sun. "Eggs dissolve. Now they must get out before they kill each other inside." Rain whimpered despite himself. "Keep walking."

Rain shuffled obediently in a loose wide circle. He pushed at the bulge of his stomach, gingerly and then harder, until he bruised trying to force the spawn out. As he walked the sun rose, and the heat of it was terrible. His throat was parched, and he felt phantom pangs of hunger that quickly morphed into nausea. A pressure was building low in his hips, his lower back cramping so hard he gagged with the force of it, like he was being stretched obscenely wide. He couldn't stand thinking about whether he could bear it, so he kept his feet moving, even after he started to need a rest to pant open-mouthed after every third step.

Something snapped inside him, shoving down with force into his pelvis, the entire weight of his belly shifting lower. He screamed, feeling a gush of liquid soak his legs and imagining blood. He had to stop moving, bracing his hands on his knees, ass lowered like he was squatting to use a city toilet.

He could feel it moving, slippery, pushed along by the cramps and by its own struggles, and he tried to relax, he wanted it _out_ , despite how agonizing every fingerlength of progress it made was. His face felt like it was burning in the sun, but that was just the sting of salt from his tears. He called out for the gods, for his mother, for mercy, but instead there was just his ass being split open from the inside and... something slid out.

He couldn't see the spawn, and in turning so he could get a decent look the cramps started up again. He nearly toppled over, but kept his feet with effort, and got a glimpse of the newborn.

The egg might have melted away, but the thick, slippery inner membrane had eased the spawn's descent. It was tangled up in it now, two legs free but failing to rip the bloody membrane from where it had tangled around its head.

Rain was incapable of bending over, but he managed to sink to his knees in the dirt, grabbing hold of the tough material and hauling it up and back, so the spawn tumbled free onto the ground. It tried to bite him, but when he dropped the membrane it was glad to sink its teeth into that nourishment instead. Before Rain could regain his feet, the second spawn dropped heavy and squirming into the narrow cradle of his hips, and this time he didn't have the mental strength to keep from groaning and grunting as his body was possessed by cramps again. His mouth flooded with saliva, and he spat it out, then spat again, because his throat hurt too much to swallow; reduced to a mewling, drooling animal by the unrelenting pain.

The second spawn had more difficulty leaving, twisting inside his passage and making him force himself upright because of the dragon's warning. He thought he felt claws, a dagger-sharp pain, but that might just have been his insides ripping themselves apart trying to expel the intrusive wrongness of a creature where none should be.

When it finally dropped out, Rain forced himself to his feet in the moment of reprieve between one birth and another. His belly had halved in size at least; he prayed to all the household gods that there was just one more inside him. The second spawn took just moments to find its feet, and its membrane had mostly slipped loose; it squabbled with its older sibling over which of them got to eat it.

Fatigue and dizziness were quickly overtaking Rain, and he worried about what would happen if he passed out. He likely wouldn't wake again. He was so close to desiring that, swaying in the struggle to stay upright. Walking would be beyond him now. He was seized in the iron vise of the cramps again and concentrated on his feet, that connection with the ground, as his vision started to fade.

The sun was straight overhead; his throat was parched; he could barely manage to grunt as the third made its way into the world. It was smothering in its caul, but Rain left the first two to take care of membrane. Either they gnawed their clutchmate free and it lived, or they ate both membrane and hapless spawn. He didn't care, he cared about nothing except that he could still feel one more lodged inside him. He kneaded his belly as hard as he could, trying to push it out, his mind finally losing grip on all rational thought. He could not bear birthing yet another one of these monsters. He'd beg if he had to.

He stared across the wide expanse of dirt, shimmering with water mirages in the sun, at the thread of smoke rising from the fireplace in the princess' quarters. He was beyond caring for his dignity, he just needed her to reach up in him and pull the creature out. He'd crawl to her if need be; he'd lick her feet clean, he'd cut off his own hand if she asked. Anything – anything – anything at all.

He'd barely stumbled more than two dragonlengths toward that illusory hope before the cramps made movement impossible, and he panted in anger at his own failure until finally the fourth and last of the spawn dropped out. The others had followed him in his limping, slow progress, and as he sank to his knees they circled him, approaching and retreating, trying to figure out what he was. Friend or food.

He put his hands to the hot dusty ground and crawled forward a few paces before his energy gave out. He fell, and had no power to rise. The spawn crawled over him, licking away the salt of his sweat. Two of them fought to clean his thighs and ass of whatever blood or jelly remained, and he couldn't muster the energy to close his legs or make any protest. He was done, he thought, and let his thoughts fade to nothing.

He woke hours later, and would have cried to find himself still alive if he'd had any water still in him. But he didn't, and he could feel the pain of it through every muscle. He resumed crawling, hating that he couldn't give up, hating that the princess used his body to secure her safety but cared nothing for him, hated the way the gritty dirt scraped his hands and his knees, hated the spawn that prowled after him.

He finally made it to the pool and let his body drop graceless under the water. The iciness of it made him thrash, sunbaked skin oversensitive. He thought about drowning, but his feet came to rest against the rocky bottom and he straightened, head tipping back for a lungful of air. For the first time in months he could breathe deeply; it was an alien sensation, and pushed uncomfortably at his battered abdomen. He sucked in air anyway, trying to think only of the moment: his body to himself at last, his service to both princess and dragon spent, the path to freedom opening ahead of him like a temptation.

He dipped his head and took a mouthful of the cold water. He swallowed one sip, which slid down into the emptiness of him, but his throat closed against the rest; he had to lean over the rim of the pool and spit it out, so as not to foul the water any further than he already had. He panted, eyes pricked by tears of frustration, and then tried to drink again. Spat most of the water out again. Continued until he was sure he'd retained some of the water, sloshing uncomfortably in his stomach. His skull still throbbed with headache, but he could think more clearly anyway.

The spawn avoided the water, though they did lap at the puddles where he'd spit water out. Having a momentary sanctuary was a blessing; he'd longed for respite, and here it was. Even the cold that had his teeth chattering together was not enough to make him want to leave the comfort of the water.

But he heard the princess' steps, leather sandals against the ground, and rolled his head to the side. His eyes were having trouble focusing; she looked as if she were glowing, a tall dark figure wreathed in golden light stolen from the sun.

The spawn crept away from her, chirping in distress, as if they could sense her anger and displeasure.

"You need proper tea," she said. "And your injuries require treatment. I see you've befriended the little beasts."

Rain didn't think so. In the sunlight, the spawn's scales and claws seemed to be hardening, and their wings had been shaken dry. They were unmistakably dragons, and therefore monsters, incapable of understanding friendship.

"They'll be fed soon," she added. "They're ravenous, especially as they didn't eat you."

That was said with a certain grim pleasure in the threat, and Rain shifted, his movements slowed by reluctance. His chest from his ribs on down felt battered, and the ache through his hips and up his spine was still ferocious, even with the water's numbing effect. He managed to push himself out but then the weight of his own body was too much to hold up. He slumped over, and even the princess kicking him hard was not enough to give him the impetus to move.

She stalked away, and when she returned she had the kettle of tea and a basket of supplies. She had to hold the cup to his mouth; he was too weak and shaking too hard to manage himself. She laid a woven mat down on the ground and he was able to half-crawl, half-fall onto it, at her urging lying first on his stomach while she examined him inside, and then rolling him over to lie on his back while she saw to his bloodied hands and knees and face.

While she worked, he drifted through waking dreams. He was aware of the dragon's return, and how it dropped the carcass of some animal over by the bone pile. He heard the squabble of the spawn fighting over the meat, the smell of blood and worse fouling the air. He imagined how it would be to be eaten.

He thought about his friends, about the clean fresh ocean and victories against sea creatures. About caravans from abroad arriving laden with precious goods, their masters calling to him by name, with a hand raised; how he'd thought that boring and had longed for adventure. Life beyond these walls surely continued. The same sun rose over everyone, after all.

He had trouble moving his legs, but he let that thought slide away. It was yet another thing the princess found fault with, but even her powers couldn't save him from sleep.

When he woke, night was fast falling and she was gone. The spawn were exploring his sprawled body. He was grateful that he didn't have the strength to startle or to flinch away. Instead he whimpered, almost too faint to be heard by his own ears. He slid his hand gently from where it was grasped in one's jaws, and turned his head to see if he had anything at hand he could use to cover his exposed cock and balls. The tea kettle and cup were there, so he pulled up to half-sitting and made himself drink. He ached for the scant comfort of his own bed, and wondered if he could make it as far as his shelter at the foot of the wall.

He attempted to stand, and did manage to gain his feet with one hand braced on his thigh and another pressed hard into his stomach. Everything felt loose and unstable. He tried to take a step next, but realized too late that his balance was off, his dizziness combining with the wrongness in his legs to make him stumble instead. He went down hard to his knees, sending all the pain in his back up his spine, and then crumbled slowly to the ground.

After a minute, he shifted over so he was lying on the mat again. He didn't need to go back to his room quite yet, he decided, and slept again.

He woke to the sound of screaming and bones crunching, though his reaction was dulled and slow. The dragon had brought the spawn goats to devour, out in the center of the well, and they were inexpert hunters. When the goats tried to stagger away, the dragon batted them back towards the spawn, looking both indulgent and profoundly impatient. The gruesome meal was over soon enough, and Rain poured more tea to give him strength before dragging himself into the pool again. The spawn hadn't entered the water the day before; he hoped it continued to provide a barrier between himself and their appetites. Even if one of them was the heir the dragon wanted so much, he wasn't sure its greater intelligence would make it see him as anything other than food.

In the water, he stretched and massaged his legs, using his hands to pull his knees up as far as he could. His stomach had been tight and firm from his training before and he doubted it'd be that way again, but he still tried to exercise the muscles. The water made the exertion easier and the pain more bearable. Appetites finally sated, the spawn had dropped to the ground and were sleeping; the dragon scraped up the bloody bones and prowled over to toss them on the bone pile, eyeing Rain as he did so.

"You live," it said. "Good."

Rain didn't doubt that this was not praise but a promise of further torture. "When will you know if one of them is your heir?"

The dragon's right side undulated. After a moment, Rain interpreted this as a shrug, perhaps learned from some human companion. "Spawn grow fast." After a moment spent contemplating the water, it added, "Dragons never stop growing."

Rain thought immediately of the dragon's six cocks (well: four and two halves). He'd hardly been able to take them at the size the dragon was now; any larger and he'd be ripped in two. He doubted either the dragon or the princess would care.

"You'll cramp if you stay in the water long," the dragon said, and moved on, all sinuous power as it leapt up to the cavern opening, to go pass time in the princess' quarters. For cultured discussion, Rain thought, of the outside world, as lost to him now as the lands spoken of in myths and legends.

He dragged himself out of the water, tried and failed again to walk, and curled up on the mat to doze, letting the sun's warmth dry his aching body.

He woke to find he'd rolled over onto his back, and a spawn had crawled onto him, its clawed feet – stained with blood and gore – planted on his chest. Its back legs were on the ground between his own, tail lashing, and it pushed against him like some parody of sex.

But – it wasn't in jest or in innocence, he realized with a whimper. A slippery cock was jabbing against his balls, and then the spawn wriggled lower. Rain tried to clench down and keep it out, but his ass was as stretched and loose as his belly. With a few abortive hard jabs the cock was shoved in to the hilt. He stared up in shock; slitted gold eyes glittered back at him. The spawn's mouth was open, a rictus that looked like a grin, lined with wicked serrated teeth.

He recalled the goats that the spawn had devoured earlier, and turned his head to the side. With that tacit acknowledgment of the spawn's power over him, it began to fuck him in earnest.

He meant to bear the violation and then put it behind him, but the cock in him was small – no thicker than two fingers, and not especially long – and the spines that would be brutal as an adult were just nubs now, that had an oddly warming way of rubbing at his insides and catching on the rim of his asshole. The violation didn't pain him, despite his expectations; rather the opposite, and he quickly found himself on the verge of both tears and orgasm. He knew the spawn cared nothing for his feelings, but he found himself begging for it to stop anyway.

He didn't want this to feel so good. He didn't want to find himself spreading his legs or canting his hips up so – _ah!_ – sweet pleasure flooded in and washed out all the pain.

He came with his knuckles shoved in his mouth to stifle his cries. The spawn seemed confused by the salt-slick of his come, and another approached to lap it up. The first spawn pulled out, and Rain breathed in deeply in shaky relief. But then it jabbed into him with its second, smooth cock, and he realized what he was in for.

By the time it had done him with all six, his ass burned from the friction; he was grateful for the familiar pain, like the return of an old friend. The pleasure had been a fleeting aberration, and when he had the strength he tried to crawl to the safety of the pool, his revulsion and nausea at being penetrated overwhelming his common-sense fear of teeth and claws. He was still unforgivably weak, though, and all he managed to do was flop from his back to his belly, and then over again, as the first spawn finished with him and then the others mounted him in turn.

He came three times, in increasing agony from overstimulation. By the time they were done with him and dropped off to sleep the sky was fully dark. He wanted to scrub away as much of their scent and slick as possible – they'd filled him with come if not eggs, he thought, and it was sliding out of him and drying tacky on his skin. Horror crawled over him like an infestation of insects; he hated knowing that part of them was still inside him. Thank all the gods they were immature and couldn't produce eggs.

His mind filled with visions, though, of what would happen if they did. They'd stuff him so full his skin would rupture, he thought, and his organs would be crushed, but that wouldn't make them stop. They'd keep forcing eggs into whatever was left of his body. He was neither parent nor person to them; just a convenient magic-wrought vessel, and he didn't know if the magic would keep him alive even if his body had split open like a ripened pomegranate spilling seeds.

He was starting to accept that he'd never escape; he half-wished he really was nothing but a mindless empty receptacle. This would be so much easier if he was just a body to be moved and posed and fucked. If he didn't spend his days steeped in horror and shame. He wished he could just... let go.

But instead he kept trying like an absolute _fool_ , as dumb as the princess kept telling him he was. He stretched and worked his muscles, he dragged himself over to the stone wall and used that to brace himself as he stood, and as he made himself take faltering steps, a few more each day. His progress was hindered by the fact that the spawn fucked him whenever they felt like it, often all four of them, for hours on end. He kept track of their growth by the size of their cocks and their weight over him. By the time their wings were strong enough to fly and they began catching goats midair that the dragon dropped from above, their cocks were roughly the size of his own. The spines were beginning to sharpen, and he often found himself washing out blood by the end of the day.

The princess supplied him with tea but kept her distance. The spawn treated him as their own, but they saw her as an intruder. None of them, Rain thought, had the higher intelligence that an heir would possess, but their animal instincts made them ferocious hunters, and they knew how to work as a pack. They'd tried a few times to catch the princess (and devour her, most likely): creating a distraction to draw her attention away from a stalker behind her, or blocking her way to the stairs. Her magic had protected her so far, but Rain understood that she was in danger whenever she descended to the bottom of the great well.

He felt an odd nostalgia for the days when he'd been full of eggs. He'd been treated as her servant, true, but even her imperious scorn and condescension had been a companionship of sorts. He had no one to talk to, now, and no tasks to keep him occupied. Though he suspected he'd be a failure at chores that he'd previously done with ease: the sewing he could perhaps manage, but not the cleaning or cooking, not yet. He wondered if the princess did her own laundry now, or if she was waiting for the next knight to be sent.

He'd be dead by then, most likely. Better than having to explain what he'd endured in order to survive, he supposed.

Weeks after the spawn's birth, he finally managed to make the walk from the pool to his shelter. He touched all his things – well: not his, precisely; they were all handed down from one victim to the next – but he still felt a fierce pleasure of achievement. He could dress now. He should perhaps finally learn how to knit. His pleasure at being upright and feeling properly human again lasted until the spawn found where he was hiding. He folded away the bedding quickly – he could just imagine how they'd destroy the mattress – and let them fuck him bloody on the floor.

*

His next challenge was to climb the stairs. He finally made the ascent pre-dawn, when dragon and spawn were still sleeping, and though he needed to use his hands by the end, he felt pleased.

The princess had laid out vegetables the night before, and had a bowl full of rice soaking with beans. A simple meal, which was good; he'd be far less likely to ruin it. He lit the fire and worked as quickly as he could. The princess woke when he was nearly done, reprimanding him for being slow and lazy, but she still allowed him to serve her at her table.

"None of the others treated them like disobedient children," the princess said, while he was scrubbing the cooking pot clean. She sounded more put-out than concerned. "They're _animals_."

"There's no heir?" Rain asked. He wasn't prepared for how hard disappointment hit him. He shouldn't have hoped... he knew that was dangerous. He was trying to perform soldiers' calisthenics, which he'd done daily since he was thirteen and had been easy, but the constant service demanded of his ass and the lingering looseness of his hips from birth made his legs unreliable. He had to force himself to pick his feet up and not shuffle when he went to the pool, and the stairs up to the princess' room had been a frighteningly great effort; he was still woozy and shaking. But he would survive. There'd be an heir next time.

The princess held him in her scrutiny for a moment, and then tossed her head back. "Do you actually care?"

Rain wet his lips, belatedly wondering whether to be honest or not. She knew everything about his body – her magic, he suspected, was sustaining him completely – but his thoughts and hopes at least were his own. Still, she'd had a human heart herself, once, he supposed.

"I want to go home."

Her face lit in surprised amusement, and she laughed, deep and genuine enough that he had to stare down into the washbasin to hide that he was blinking back the sting of tears. "They all do. But most of the others," she waved the back of her hand toward the door, in the direction of the bone pile, "plotted murder and escape. Quite the handful. None of them decided to patiently wait until the contract was completed."

Rain was not patient; he yearned desperately for his freedom, so much that sometimes he found it hard to breathe, thinking about dying here. But he took a breath and simply said, "They didn't succeed. With murder. Or escape."

"They killed some of the spawn." She stood, brushing her hands briskly, as if wiping away dirt. "You're the first to willingly spread his legs for the little beasts, as well. Perhaps you always were a whore at heart. But you do have other duties. Attend me."

She rose from the table and walked away, and Rain hurried after her, as quickly as he could with his limping gait. He spent the morning scrubbing her quarters clean, going up and down the stairs fetching buckets of water (for her amusement; she could easily have allowed him to use the water from the garden, but she liked watching him struggle) and listening to the plaintive cries of the spawn every time he disappeared from their view.

He hated them, but somehow they were his; he had no call to feel anything toward them besides loathing (and he would murder them, he thought, if he could get away with it), but he had a certain mastery over them.

They crawled over him that night and fucked him raw, and fought over fucking him, and scored his back with their claws, but in return they _accepted_ him as... family, of a sort, he supposed. They wanted to protect him from everything but themselves.

He trusted them more than anyone else here, certainly.

*

The spawn were restless, and a sea change had come over the dragon. Where it had been indulgent, now it was impatient, vicious in protecting its own territory. It no long brought the spawn food, and they mewled in hunger. Rain descended the stairs and each time wondered if he'd be set upon, ripped limb from limb.

After a few days, one of the spawn soared up to the top of the well and then disappeared from view. Hours passed; the three remaining pinned Rain down and forced themselves on him, as if looking for comfort in the only way they understood.

One more left that evening. The princess seemed grimly satisfied, and Rain's body betrayed him with a tremor that wouldn't abate.

In his shelter that night, after he'd fallen asleep on the ground with the spawn curled around him, he was woken when he was mounted again. His body had been lax and fucked-out, so the sharp-spined cock cut into him easily, but he hadn't been able to prepare, and he struggled as if escape was possible, unable to stop the tide of panic.

The spawn held him down easily. It was bigger than he was now, by far, and it lowered its great head to him like a serpent striking.

"Say the word," the spawn whispered against his ear, "and I'll return for you as soon as you're egg-heavy."

Rain breathed very fast, his face pressed into the dirt by the weight pinning him down. Dragons didn't talk, they were simply animals; their intelligence was merely cunning and instinct. But the princess' dragon was different, and it had yearned for an heir. But of course the heir itself would be clever enough to hide from its monstrous parent. Through the dizzying thoughts in his head, Rain managed to grasp the most essential: "You'll take me away?"

The spawn thrust into him harshly. "I will need a breeder of my own."

Ah. _Ah._

"And then I will return someday and fill the dragon with my own spawn," it added, offhand and casually vicious in a way that broke through Rain's perpetual weariness and made him smile for a moment.

He hadn't thought dragons could be funny.

"Yes," he said, closing his eyes, telling himself that was what he wanted. Freedom, or close enough to it. "I'll go with you."

The next time the spawn changed cocks it said, "You'll need tea."

Rain shuddered. He _knew_ , much as he hated the knowledge. He remembered seeing the princess carefully crack open the dragon's egg and mix the contents, spreading it in a thin layer on a dish to dry, and then grinding it and the shards of shell into a fine powder. At the time, the significance of this potion-making had eluded him; he'd only realized what he'd been drinking much later on. He knew that he owed his survival, dire as it was, to the dragon's need to breed.

"I can't," he protested anyway. He shifted under the relentless thrusts, trying to find a position where his insides felt less battered.

"You will for me," the spawn said. "You promised."

"You're smaller." A pathetic argument; it wouldn't be for long. "It _hurts_."

"It's what you're for," the spawn said, and came in him again, switching cocks. Rain let the conversation die.

*

The dragon swooped down into the well at dawn the next day, bellowing rage and making the last two spawn take flight in terror. It chased after them in rage, and when it returned it was alone. There was blood on its claws and mouth.

It bellowed for Rain next, and he stripped his tunic off and forced himself to hurry. He didn't want to be used again, and he was already crying in shame at his own weakness when he laid down and raised his hips up. He didn't beg, not at the beginning, but he did by the end.

Everything was worse now that he knew what would happen, and the healing he'd done since the spawn were born meant he was too tight again, despite the spawns' constant efforts. Or perhaps the dragon had grown; each cock certainly felt bigger than last time. There were more eggs as well, and he had to arch his back against the pressure inside him. Even raised up on his knees, his belly scraped against the ground.

As before, the final eggs didn't enter him properly, and the princess took the last one from him. Payment, he thought, his tithe to the realm. His contribution to the future queen's immortality.

He wanted to crawl to safety, but he'd made himself relearn to walk, even crippled as he now was, because he was still a person. No matter what was done to him, he was not an animal. Every pained slow step he took towards the pool was a testament. 

He bathed, and pulled his tunic on, even though it hung absurdly far in front of him and failed to protect his modesty. He drank as much tea as he could, in tiny sips spaced out so his compressed and battered guts wouldn't rebel and make him spit it up.

He fetched his reed mat from his shelter and curled up on it by the pool's edge. The dragon had flown off, still in some madness of mating urge, and he was jolted awake when it dove back into the well, wings raising dustdevils in its wake. It circled three times, as if making sure its territory was inviolate, and then swooped up into the princess' quarters. The faint music of her pipes stopped for a moment, and then resumed.

Much, much later Rain was roused by an impatient shake. He flinched away by instinct, but a moment later he was rising, silent and as swiftly as he could. The spawn ripped his tunic away with impatient claws, and he told himself that he couldn't resent it for that, not when it needed to be able to keep a firm hold on him as it launched up from the ground to rise clumsily toward the upper ridge of the well.

And then – they were out and gliding down over boulder-strewn scrubland. Rain felt exuberant joy thinking for a moment that they were going to collect his supplies, left here so long ago. They landed and were on the ground before he realized he had no need of them: not his trading good, or his armor, not his bow and the arrows gifted to him. Everything that had made him a knight of the realm was irrelevant now. He was something else entirely.

The spawn wasn't privy to his sudden nostalgic longing; instead, it crawled over him to manipulate his belly with three and four legs at once, palpitating until it had a good grip on an egg and then setting its weight behind it, pushing it out of the egg-place made of magic and into Rain's tight passage, still burning with the damage from the mating. Rain bit down on his arm to keep from screaming. It felt like he was being torn apart.

The first egg shifted into his pelvis and then, as the spawn strained against it, stretched him utterly wide to slide out and roll against his thigh. Without reprieve, the spawn set to work on the next; Nothing Rain could say would ease the process, and he had no expectation of mercy. He let the pain wash over him in surrender.

When all the eggs had been dislodged, the spawn had Rain fashion a sling out of the tattered remains of his tunic, binding one egg to his stomach tightly. He felt nothing for the loss of the dragon's second brood of spawn, and wondered if he should; whether there should be sadness at this betrayal, or the knowledge that the princess would have to summon another knight to take his place.

The spawn was not so sentimental. It cracked two eggs open with its jaws, one after the other, and slurped down the contents before cracking the shards into pieces that could be swallowed down whole. The other eggs were left; to rot, Rain supposed.

With Rain lightened of the eggs' weight and the spawn invigorated from ingesting its potential siblings, they resumed their flight, Rain clutched tightly against the rough plates of the spawn's underside.

Unlike the utter darkness inside the bottom of the well, the night experienced from the sky was a giddy joy, with moonlight reflected off clouds and the stars glittering above in familiar constellations. Flight felt like freedom, and he loved it far more than he feared the drop.

It occurred to him that he could name this spawn, which held his life in its claws. After all, no one else would.

"I'm going to call you Sky," Rain called, raising his voice above the wind. "It's a good name. Strong."

He'd never have human children, but that was in the end a relief. No one to witness him in his chosen shame, aside from this, his dragon child.

"Fool," Sky replied. Its great wings beat, carrying them further north, away from the sea and the harbors of home.


End file.
